Talk about four seasons in one day....

Yesterday started off with me in a pretty foul mood. Actually, considering I'd had six hours of broken sleep, and not even the kind of sleep that mothers are used to, but really, really awful quality, broken sleep, I was crabby as no one who'd walked the earth! So I tried my hardest to pull myself out of the funk. I decided real early on that I wasn't going anywhere with such an ugly attitude, and got myself and Ethan dressed in comfy but do-able clothes. I opened the baby-on-its-way's bedroom door and we got stuck in to our little jobs that remained.

Ethan asked for the back door to be opened, which I happily obliged because he just loves the backyard - our dog is just super friendly and they play chasey, have tea parties and all sorts of things if you sneak up to the window or door and watch them. So Ethan had free riegn to come and go inside as he pleased, which made him happy (and easier to deal with in my crabby-bottomed haze!). So together, as he felt he wanted to, we cleaned the cabinets down, put together the bassinette, placed our wall decals, and packed a basket for my partner to bring to the hospital in case I'm in there for longer than we hope for. So not counting the cot, which is assembled but doesn't have the mattress in it, everything is just about ready. I'll do another post in the next few days with some pictures of the bub's room, because I'm so proud we managed to do the whole thing without really spending much money at all. Very simple savings of me!

With that sense of achievement under my belt, my crabbiness abated a little. My next irritation came in the form of my disgusting bathroom tile grout. It's been disgusting me for quite some time. I don't know if it's just me, but I notice where feet go. We have pretty cheap, thin carpet throughout the entire house except for a couple of strips of lino in the kitchen and laundry, and tiles in the bathrooms. And man, can you see the spots where we walk in the bathrooms! It's not that I don't wash my floors, it's those greasy marks that your feet leave behind on the grout that was starting to show up pretty bad. I've never cleaned grout before, but found a fantastic biodegradable product through Enjo call Calcium Disolver. I diluted it and sprayed the grout while I sat on the floor with a toothbrush and scrubbed the marks out. It worked amazingly, and I did all of the ensuite bathroom floor in under an hour! So my mood lifted even further with the theraputic scrubbing back and forth, and the fantastic result that I achieved without a nasty chemical in sight!

Then came the real fun....I have a girlfriend who is a party planner for a clothing company. I did an Enjo demo for her when I first started, and she mentioned that we could demo swap back then so I signed up to do a party for her in exchange for mine. The total that she owed, I asked for in credit on her products, so basically we both got products from each other for free. Well, the clothes department in my home is not the most loved and definitely the LEAST paid attention to in the whole house. I hardly ever buy clothes for myself, and if I do it's more secondhand, usually to replace something that is long overdue to go in the rag bag anyway. Well, yesterday was retail therapy to the MAX! I managed to get $475 worth of clothes for a measly $75 out of pocket! I walked away with about 9 items, because the company she works for are having a party special where for every $100 you spend you get a half price item as well. Then we factored in the credit I had from paying my friends items of Enjo, then the credit my friends generated through their spending (they also got the $100 special), and then the host rewards of a free garment, a $20 voucher and a half price item. So all in all, I'm going to look pretty fab over christmas, which is really quite exciting for me! I was soooo excited!

The day ended with one of my friends staying behind for dinner, and that boosted my spirits through the roof, making the perfect end to what started out as a very cloudy day. How lucky I am to have friends who'll do so much for me in mood and in smiles!